Showrooms full of pianos, guitars, and violins, venues for live musical performances, remarkable customer service, and a slide—don’t forget the slide.
Hillsdale College students took a trip to the Sweetwater Sound Inc. in Fort Wayne, IN on Feb. 5.
“The best way to describe Sweetwater: It’s an IKEA for music,” junior Michael Thelen said. “You go inside, and there’s musical stuff everywhere. There’s other stuff that’s not music, but it works.”
Instructional Technologies and Applications Manager Heidi Bargerhuff, who headed up the trip, said her Academic AV Team and the Event AV Team had planned to visit and see what Sweetwater had to offer. She thought it would be fun for students to go too.
Thelen said Sweetwater gave him the rare opportunity to try out multiple guitars he had seen online or from companies he follows on Instagram.
“My favorite part was the guitar room, because I’m a guitar player,” Thelen said. “I got to see the ones that are cool, grab them, bring them to a practice room and try them out.”
The pianos were the highlight for junior Matthias Rhein, who says he will probably play piano until he dies.
“They had pianos out, and so I got to play on a really nice piano,” Rhein said, “and I got to play on a keytar. It’s like a guitar but instead of strings it has piano keys. I think I need a keytar now.”
Sophomore Jonathan Abrantes plays the violin in the college orchestra, but the highlight of the trip for him had nothing to do with music.
“My favorite part was the slide,” Abrantes said. “They had all the music stuff, then, in a separate part, there was a slide going from the second story to the first story. The slide gave me such a visceral surge of energy and excitement that I’ve never felt before in my life.”
“It looked like a lot of fun,” Bargerhuff said. “I would have gone down the slide myself had I had time.”
For Bargerhuff the best part of the day was spending time with the students.
“Our students are a lot of fun to be with,” Bargerhuff said. “That was the highlight of my time, to talk to them all, see what’s interesting to them and how what we did maybe grew them or at least opened their eyes to something a little bit different—and it was away from campus for a cold February day.”
Bargerhuff said she’ll see about organizing the trip again next year if there’s interest.
“I think the whole school should go,” Abrantes said. “Sweetwater is something everyone should experience.”